The European Union has recently reached an agreement on a significant competition reform known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will impose strict rules on large tech companies that will have to offer users the ability to communicate with each other using different apps. WhatsApp is one of the companies that will be required to comply with the new regulations outlined in the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. This is because WhatsApp is considered a gatekeeper service since it’s a large tech platform with a substantial user base and falls within the criteria set by the DMA. With the latest WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.19.8 update, which is available on the Google Play Store, we discovered that WhatsApp is working on complying with the new regulations:
As you can see in this screenshot, WhatsApp is working on a new section dedicated to the new regulations. Since it is still in development, this section is still not ready, it appears empty and it’s not accessible to users, but its title confirms to us that they are now working on it. WhatsApp has a 6-month period to align the app with the new European regulations to provide its interoperability service in the European Union. At the moment, it remains unclear whether this feature will also eventually extend to countries beyond the European Union.
Interoperability will allow other people to contact users on WhatsApp even if they don’t have a WhatsApp account. For example, someone from the Signal app could send a message to a WhatsApp user, even without a WhatsApp account. While this broader network can definitely enhance communication with those people who use different messaging apps and assist those small apps in competing within the messaging app industry, we acknowledge that this approach may also raise important considerations about end-to-end encryption when receiving a message from users who don’t use WhatsApp. In this context, as this feature is still in its early stages of development, detailed technical information about this process on WhatsApp as a gatekeeper is currently very limited, but we can confirm that end-to-end encryption will have to be preserved in interoperable messaging systems. In addition, as mentioned in Article 7 of the regulations, it appears that users may have the option to opt out when it will be available in the future.
Third-party chat support is under development and it will be available in a future update of the app. As always, we will share a new article when we have further information regarding this feature.
Apparently the feature can be disabled…But how this is implemented will be the main point. We’ll see. I for one welcome this (forced) change. Maybe I can finally uninstall Whatsapp.
I hold my bets that it’s going to use the Matrix protocol and keep using Signal’s encryption, this is pretty much what;;s out there already.
About too many apps, I never got bother by it really, but recently I discovered Beeper, which is a fancy frontend for an ansible playbook with matrix bridges for many popular chat apps, and I really liked the convenience of having everything in one app. The playbook they use is FOSS, obviously, and you can self host it, which I did. I use the Element app and I have bridges for WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Discord, Instagram and Messenger. There are some flaws and quirks still, but in time they’ll be patched out.
If you’re into self hosting, I recommend checking out the playbook, or if you just want the work done for you, check out Beeper (and for the American folks, Beeper has SMS/RCS integration and can use iMessage on Android, Windows and Linux)
Any chance you have a Beeper invite to share? I’ve been on the wait-list awhile.
Here you go
do Voice and video work for WhatsApp and Discord?
Nope, as of now it’s not possible to forward calls to the bridges, so you still need the apps for calls.
If they’re smart they’ll just do nothing to block spam via the new feature except offering a button in all new chats to turn the feature off (just like there currently is a report/block button).
Spammers will do the rest for them :(
And I’m not even worried about writing this here - I’m not giving them ideas, this one was obvious from the start.